The Integration Policies of Belarus and Ukraine vis-à-vis the EU and Russia: A Comparative Analysis Through the Prism of a Two-Level Game Approach

by Victoria Leukavets

Overview

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the escalating rivalry between the EU and Russia in their shared neighbourhood created major economic, political and security challenges for the two states that border them: Belarus and Ukraine. Both countries were made integration offers by the EU and Russia. Their responses, and the consequences of these choices, were driven by a complex range of domestic and foreign policy factors. Drawing widely on extensive empirical research, Dr Leukavets shows how the EU’s and Russia’s rival integration projects challenged the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine to make major strategic choices while aiming to ensure the independence and sovereignty of their countries. The study sheds important light on the genesis of the 2020 Belarus crisis and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783838212470
Publisher:	ibidem Press
Publication date:	08/08/2023
Series:	Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
Pages:	354
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Victoria Leukavets is a post-doctoral research fellow and a policy analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies. She has an interdisciplinary background and holds several postgraduate degrees, including an MA in human rights from the University of Manchester, an MA in EU international relations from the College of Europe, and a PhD in political science from the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. In addition, Dr Leukavets has held fellowships at the European Parliament in Brussels, the UK Parliament, Harvard Davis Center and Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has published in, among other outlets, Europe-Asia Studies, Belarus-Analysen, Russian Analytical Digest, Caucasus Survey and New Perspectives.

Editorial Reviews

A solid and valuable piece of academic work. This clearly structured and factually rich book benefits from and contributes to several theoretical and empirical scholarly literatures. It is a useful guide to the collection, organization, assessment, and interpretation of the enormous amount of relevant historical and contemporary evidence.

Peter Mayer

Methodologically well-designed and thoroughly researched, this book, originally a doctoral thesis, scrupulously considers a number of factors [...] and delivers a detailed, empirically rich and theoretically informed account of ‘two+-level games’ observed in Ukraine’s and Belarus’ strategic interactions vis-à-vis both the European Union and Russia in 1994–2020. Victoria Leukavets’ work deserves attention and could well serve as an authoritative source to rethink and reassess the promises and pitfalls of sovereignty games before and after February 2022.

Europe-Asia Studies - Andriy Tyushka

A rich and thorough empirical analysis.

Frank Schimmelfennig